thinkbroadband

The cities allowed to enter the next round of urban broadband funding announced
Friday 04 May 2012 13:23:27 by
Andrew Ferguson

The push to make the UK look uber cool with respect to broadband continues.
The Chancellor announced a further £50m of funding for smaller cities in his
most recent budget, some six weeks later the actual 27
cities that can enter this race have been announced.

The criteria for being in the list is that the city has a Royal Charter and
comprises more than 45,000 homes and businesses, reduced to 35,000 for Northern
Ireland.

Only ten cities will be chosen so the odds are stacked against each bid, and
the money is meant to only be used in areas where will not be served by
ultrafast broadband by the private sector. In cities like York who already have
Virgin Media, BT FTTC and FTTP and CityFibre starting to deploy, identifying a contiguous area
within the city boundary may prove challenging. Londonderry also is rare in
that all its BT street cabinets have a corresponding fibre to the cabinet
buddy, which will at present not really cover the 80 to 100 Mbps requirement,
but with vectoring it may do in a couple of years, and the announcement of FTTP
on Demand for all FTTC areas raises the question, is that on-demand aspect
enough?

For those in the most rural 10% of the UK, who will scream what about the
widening digital divide? This news is not going to reduce the volume of their
screams.

Comments

Posted by
mervl over 5 years ago
And the relevance of the Royal Charter is? You've gotta laugh . . .

Posted by
andrew ( staff member)
over 5 years ago
Presume the Royal Charter is to stop large towns entering.

Posted by
undecidedadrian over 5 years ago
And now I can see why there was a scrabble for the extra jubilee city charters if extra money will be handed out to small cities as oppose to large towns for urban projects.

Posted by
mervl over 5 years ago
both . . . or even the much larger number of non-metropolitan towns without a Royal Charter!!

Posted by
tommy45 over 5 years ago
They should have already roiled out FTTP by now to every city and major town at least,

Posted by
chrysalis over 5 years ago
what is it with treating cities as biddign companies? they all should get funding, not just 10. I am guessing the cities which least need the help (highest potential) will get the money.

Posted by
postie90 over 5 years ago
K U Hull have NO private investment for broadband.
ie KC only , NO BT,NO Virgin etc etc. !!